


Stasis

by ubiquitousLinguist



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Codependency, Multi, Vomit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 19:26:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1561388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ubiquitousLinguist/pseuds/ubiquitousLinguist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You rake your fingers through Rose’s hair with practiced ease as she pitches forward over the load-gaper, a strangled grunt preceding the contents of her stomach. <i>How has this come to pass</i>, a question you once truly sought an answer to, floats through your mind idly as you lean further behind her in an attempt – failed – to keep the splattering of Rose’s ejections into the load gaper off your skirt. As she sputters apologies and half-formed words of thanks from your elbow, you force yourself to look at what’s become of the person you loved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stasis

You rake your fingers through Rose’s hair with practiced ease as she pitches forward over the load-gaper, a strangled grunt preceding the contents of her stomach. _How has this come to pass_ , a question you once truly sought an answer to, floats through your mind idly as you lean further behind her in an attempt – failed – to keep the splattering of Rose’s ejections into the load gaper off your skirt. As she sputters apologies and half-formed words of thanks from your elbow, you force yourself to look at what’s become of the person you loved.

Your eyes fall to her throat, distinct to you for the lack of perforation marks from a time when you would feed from her. Those marks of mutual trust were from a time when you liked to trace the strong angle of her jaw with a finger, when you couldn’t help but admire the challenging set of her shoulders, when you needed to match your own leisurely pace to her assured strides else she would pull ahead and leave you in her wake. 

A time that has long since passed. 

“Kanaya.” Your gaze flicks to her ashen profile as she continues breathlessly, “I wanna give my appreshashiye… appreciate…shun --” Rose gives a great shudder and continues her purge, from which you flinch back in disgust. The smell alone is enough to drive any creature away, like that of decaying flesh. It wasn’t, apparently, something to which you would grow accustomed.

The first few occurrences were highly alarming, and the smell was the worst part. You were entirely unfamiliar with xenobiological illness and had no idea what to do for your Rose, save for patting at her back and whispering that everything was going to be quite alright. Despite your reassurances, you had no real idea what was happening, no knowledge as to why Rose was in pain and unable to breathe past whatever substance was being forced out through her mouth. You were terrified. When you saw her shuffling the same toxin across her workspace many evenings later, her response to your shocked inquiry had been a dismissive “It’s quite alright Kanaya, merely a token of deepest motherly affection.”

You weren’t quite sure what to make of that.

Months later find you here, lip curling in distaste at the girl whose eyes could bore into you like the rays of the Alternian sun. Rose turns those eyes up at you, now watery and dull. “Thank you frr bein’ here with me, Kanaya. ’S rully good’f you when I’m all…” She grins lopsidedly at you, and you notice that she’s got a trail of vomit dripping from her chin.

 _Get away from me_ your mind screams, but you nod stiffly. You can’t look away from that awful string of yellowed mucus. As it elongates in its bid for the load-gaper, you’re surprised to find a suppressed rage flickering steadily. “Ffffuck,” Rose falls to her knees next to the apparatus, and you wonder with affront where her pride went. You remember the way she would walk into a block with her chin up, as if it belonged to her alone. Now she alternates between hurrying past encountered occupants of the meteor guiltily and slouching through blocks like an injured barkbeast. It’s pitiful to watch.

You never had this problem with your moirail.

Your bloodpusher still clenches at the reminder of Vriska, the original captor of your affections. There was never any end to her stories of adventure and activity. Though you disapproved of what she was up to, you loved to occupy yourself with this girl who drove herself at full-throttle. You were the only troll with the ability – with the _permission_ – to care for her and keep up with her breakneck pace. She would self-destruct otherwise. 

That such a strong girl _needed_ you provided a rush of self-importance and confidence. This fearsome pirate put herself into your hands to care for her, and into no one else’s. As much as she killed and tormented and terrified, it was you to whom she turned when she was vulnerable. It made you giddy.

This, you think as you kneel to tuck a sweat-soaked clump of Rose’s hair behind her ear, is not vulnerability. This is pathetic.

You loved Vriska because, while she was afraid of her lusus and herself underneath it all, she never stopped moving. Vriska was a natural disaster who could not be arrested. Even in her moments of doubt, she knew that she needed to act in order to push past it. She just needed a steady, reassuring hand to help her orient herself. Rose used to be similarly unstoppable. Once she had decided on something, she was never to be swayed. She was tirelessly obstinate. She moved with an end goal cemented in her mind, and worked to bring about that goal with her own hands. 

Now you’re not sure if Rose’s goals mean anything to her anymore. The same girl who commandeered Derse in order to blow herself up in an act of love and self-sacrifice for the good of her friends slumps defeated on the floor of your respiteblock, wiping her befouled mouth with a shaky hand. 

Rose stares slack-jawed back at you with tired, blank eyes, and you wonder what she’s thinking. You wonder if she knows how disappointed you are in her.

It’s quiet for a while as you tentatively mull over how very far she’s fallen under your expectations. You loved the quick wit she possessed and her cocky smirk, but that’s fallen away from her as she’s sunk deeper into the mire of her own mind as time continued to pass on the meteor. 

At some point, Rose had begun to pull away from your casual touches – an affectionate hand on her arm, reassuring fingers at the base of her spine. There was clearly something the matter; she was shutting you out. The toxins followed soon thereafter.

You used to spend all of your time doing things together on the meteor. Rose loved being by your side; you could tell from the close proximity with which she would walk next to you, how she’d reach to twine your fingers together absently, the way that her face seemed to radiate ease and comfort when she was in your lap. That began to taper off soon after your first date, and at first you thought you had perhaps made a mistake or misspoken. It soon became clear that she simply wanted time alone to indulge in her toxins and her resulting naps that grew longer as the days went by. 

You tried so, so many times to draw her out of her own head and into conversation, activity, _anything_. After so many cool brush-offs and “please stop mothering me, Kanaya”s, you no longer have the wherewithal to reach out to her. She’d been shutting you down for weeks until you finally fell silent and let things be. 

She never wanted your help or your fussing, and yet, whenever she was intoxicated enough she’d find you to drape herself across your shoulders and breathe into your ear about how beautiful you were, how much she loved you - and of course she’d thank you meekly for holding her hair back while she ejected her stomach contents after the fact.

A wet clap derails your thought process, and your bloodpusher leaps to your throat when you look down to see Rose’s vomit-crusted fingers trying to find purchase on your wrist as she begins a new round of apologies. Sickened, you unthinkingly tear your arm from her weak grasp and you see her face fall. 

“K’naya? Don’… you love me ‘nymore?” she asks tentatively, her gaze unsteadily roaming your face. You wonder if she can even process any of the information she’s reading from your expression in this state. You think not.

“Rose, please, don’t be ridiculous,” you grit through your teeth. “Of course I love you.” Her eyes drop to the floor and she bobs her head in a nod.

“Righ’, no, I know, but…” She doesn’t seem to notice that her left hand looks as if it’s been submerged in a bucket of mucus and mysterious chunks. It takes every ounce of compassion in you to keep yourself from spitting at her _You used to be a human of character. You had a future. I used to respect you. I admired you. I loved you._

Rose never finishes her sentence, as her glassy eyes droop closed and her head plunks lightly onto the load gaper. “’M just tired.” 

You take in her slumped form and the nauseating smell that has come to characterize your respiteblock lately, and a suppressed anger that has become your clandestine companion seeps through you. Rose’s distance despite obviously needing help frustrates you, and the sheer idiocy behind such an act is the worse offence. Her apologies as she vomits have always been repulsive to you, but they’re suddenly unbearable. The way that she curls in on herself when she passes her brother in the hallway as if she’s helpless – _helpless_ , Rose Lalonde, Seer of Light and one of the most incredible women you’ve ever met – infuriates you, and your clenched hands and pricking eyes make it very clear that you cannot bear another second of this.

 

 

 

“Kanaya?” Karkat’s suspicious glower gives way to concern as he takes in the sight of you standing at the door to his respiteblock – face drawn, sleeves rolled up, skirt flecked with discoloured splotches. “What the everloving fuck, are you alright?”

It seemed like such a small thing - “are you alright?” – but it was something you had not been asked in a very long time. It suddenly occurs to you as you blink down into Karkat’s searching gaze that you are not alright. You are not alright at all. 

“I would appreciate some of your time,” you manage through a mysterious lump in your windhole, “if you can spare it.”

He rolls his eyes at that and he throws open his door, muttering that he’s had more Time than he can fucking handle lately and that you’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like.

You nod and step into the block – this is new territory for you, you note with a pang of sadness. Before teams and kernelsprites and denizens, there were just friends you longed to meet scattered across your planet. Your hope was that, once you all had the game well under way, you could spend limitless time with your friends. Being tasked with the creation of a universe took up a grossly unfair amount of time, however, though the boon of Karkat’s help was a delightful relief to the alternative of having to do it alone. Despite his quick temper and impatience, there’s no one else you’d have preferred to spend months catching frustratingly plentiful frogs with.

The two of you spent _months_ together. And now you were near strangers, it becomes clear as you subtly steal glances around his block.  
Most of its contents do not surprise you aside from their novelty, but you don’t miss Karkat tearing a blanket from a pile on the floor to throw it hastily atop… what appears to be a set of turntables lodged unceremoniously in the corner of the room. You’re moved by a hasty pity for Karkat when he turns a twisted grimace and a challenging glare towards you, so you pinch your lips and choose not to ask.

“So did you want a fucking guided tour of my respite block, or did you finally pull your chute from Rose’s long enough to ask if there was any other form of sentient life on this rock?” He tries to sound casually flippant, but he fails to keep a little hurt from seeping into his words. The two of you really haven’t spoken much since you arrived on the meteor between shirking Vriska, discovering the humans and a mass slaughter of your friends. 

Guilt gnaws at you in addition to your pre-existing disgust with Rose. You never intended to alienate your best friend.

Despite your guilt for not seeking him out sooner and shame for finding yourself in this situation to begin with, there’s something in the tired slump of Karkat’s shoulders that draws your response from you.

“No, I simply… I needed a friend. I needed someone,” you amend shame-facedly. You’ve not been much of a friend lately. You grit your teeth as your eyes begin to well, to your horror.

He moves faster than you were prepared for. Within seconds his arms are tucked around your awkward frame and he’s cursing softly against your collarbone. 

Your lips begin to frame a choked apology before it dies on your tongue, killed by a horrified sense of déjà vu and recollection of Rose’s hoarse “I’m sorry”s. How could you have let this happen? This dysfunction with Rose, this malfunction with Karkat. You never wanted any of this. You just wanted to make her happy, to make yourself happy. A voice that sounds distressingly like Vriska sneers in the back of your mind. ‘So did you manage to cut it? Did you end up coming through for anyone here?’

 _No_ , you think miserably. You drop your face to Karkat’s dark curls and try to regain control of your breathing, lest you permit any tears to drop. His natural smell floods your sniffnodes - he’s not used the ablution trap in a couple of days most evidently – and it’s calming. Almost as calming as the hand on your back, tracing abstract patterns across your shoulder blades. You don’t think you’ve ever felt such a gentle touch from another being who wasn’t your custodian. Your bloodpusher clenches painfully.

“…noticed something a-fucking-miss was going on,” Karkat was murmuring furiously. “You fucksuckers don't spend twelve microseconds apart - you haven’t in months, that’s unhealthy you idiot - and I’ve wanted to say something to you but I haven’t goddamn laid eyes on you without a blindingly orange-clad attached to your arm like a fucking cold you can’t get rid of-” Your eyes slide shut. His voice rumbles through your midsection where he’s pressed against you and the sensation is soothing. 

His fingers pause along your spine as he cuts himself off. “Where the hell is she, anyway?”

“Alseep.” You’re not lying. His expression turns sour.

“So you two do sleep. I was beginning to wonder.”

“I’m sorry I’ve not been around lately,” you try lamely but sincerely. “I’ve… been very busy.”

“Yeah I fucking noticed. Too busy for everything that used to be important to you.” His brow furrows. “Y’know, I haven’t seen you in anything but that same shirt-skirt combo in weeks, at least. Do you even sew at all anymore?”

Sewing. You can’t actually remember the last time you held a needle and thread, and you suddenly ache for the loss. You really did relinquish everything you loved to pour yourself into the upkeep of this matespritship.

“She says she likes this look on me best,” you supply instead. 

Karkat gives you an unimpressed look and jerks his head in the direction of his blanket stack. “You said you needed a friend. I’m gonna assume this isn’t just about your shitshow of a matespritship. 

"What’s going on with you?”


End file.
